In many cases, a customer may enter a store and interact with a number of store employees to purchase an item. The customer may have a good or bad experience based on this interaction, whether the sought-after item was available for purchase, or other circumstances. This type of information may provide valuable insight for store management to improve future customer experiences.
Many times, stores try to gather customer feedback by sending requests to customers via email, which may have been provided by the customer when enrolling in a loyalty rewards program, signing up for purchasing incentives, etc. Additionally, stores may request customer feedback once the customer has made an online purchase, which may be requested upon online checkout or emailed to the customer after the purchase has been completed.
However, collecting feedback from customers in this way has several drawbacks. First, a customer may not be prompted for feedback if the customer has not purchased anything. In other words, because typical feedback systems rely on generating feedback when a customer purchases an item, customers visiting a store but leaving dissatisfied after being unable to make a purchase are never asked for feedback. Since customers leaving stores without purchasing an item are likely to be unsatisfied with their experience, not obtaining this feedback may potentially skew feedback by excluding a large number of negative customer experiences, thereby giving many stores a false perception of customer satisfaction.
Second, when customers do purchase items and feedback is solicited, the customer may not remember details identifying the employees in which the customer interacted. Therefore, although feedback may be gathered from purchasing customers, details that may be important to correct bad customer experiences with particular employees and/or stores may never be determined.
As a result, gathering detailed feedback from customers based on their shopping experience with particular store employees regardless of whether a customer makes a purchase in the store is important but presents several challenges.